May 10, 2002.The biggest scam on television these days is the psychic scam and I'm not
talking about
Miss Cleo. The fact that
George
Anderson,
John Edward and James Van Praagh
each has his own show watched by millions of Americans is almost enough to
make any self-respecting skeptic throw in the towel. If we can't topple
obvious charlatans with our dazzling explanations of how
cold reading works, how
wishful thinking operates, how
confirmation bias prevents us from
thinking critically, etc., then what good are we? You would think that
demonstrating the foolishness of believing these characters are really
getting encrypted messages from the dead would be like shooting fish in a
barrel with a machine gun. Not so. Instead of diminishing in popularity as
they expose themselves, they are expanding exponentially.

The late Bonny Lee Bakley (her husband, the actor Robert
Blake, has been accused of murdering her) purportedly instructs George
Anderson to tell her sister that, "We'll always be bosom buddies." The
sister is in the room, so one has to wonder why Bonny Lee doesn't speak to
her directly. The sister proclaims she knows it is Bonny "talking"
because "We had breast reduction surgery together!" What am I missing
here?

I know some will criticize my complaint about TV shows
that exploit human gullibility and vulnerability because they think I am
advocating censorship. I'm not. However, I am not in complete agreement
with USA Today TV critic Robert Bianco who said he has no objection to
shows featuring psychic mediums purporting to hear auditory fragments from
dead people. Bianco is
quoted
as saying, "I will say up front that everybody has intelligence lines they
won't cross and mine is I believe people don't speak to the dead
especially on a 'will call' basis." First of all, even though I
characterize as stupid the shows and the performances of these
so-called mediums, I don't believe the people who watch and support these
shows are all stupid. To say so would be stupid. My guess is that the
viewers of Dead Can Talk TV run the gamut of intelligence levels
from stupid to genius. When I call the shows stupid I can only mean that
they cross my intelligence line. I've analyzed this twaddle
dozens of times before, so I am not going to bother repeating myself.

Unlike Bianco, I do have objections to these shows. We
have laws against fraud: deceiving people to relieve them of their money.
The only thing that seems to protect "psychics"
from prosecution is the fact that it is impossible to prove that they are
not hearing voices of the dead. Yet, what if one them were to appear in
court and offer as testimony information they received from the dead,
privy only to them, offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with no
guarantee that it is true much less that anyone knows for sure what it
means? He'd be carted away for immediate psychiatric evaluation. It seems
to me that our courts require minimal standards of what kind of testimony
is reasonable, yet TV producers and audiences won't even apply such
standards to the programs they promote and watch. We're not talking about
fiction or drama here. These people are claiming their performances do not
involve trickery or chicanery.

One of my main gripes about these shows is that they make
my job as a teacher more difficult. Who can blame students for taking
these "psychics" seriously when they have seen their deceptions and
delusions validated repeatedly by alleged news reporters like
Paula Zahn on CNN, or by talk show hosts like Larry King and Charles
Grodin, or influential entertainers like Oprah and Montel Williams? I
suppose it wouldn't be so bad if occasionally there were a skeptical
critique given equal time and credibility. Free speech is obviously better
than censorship, but self-regulation of this pornography for the mind
seems to be contributing to our growing irrationality as a nation. I don't
think I'm exaggerating when I say that it is a matter of national security
that we get these frauds off the air. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a
little bit, but I can't help the way I feel when I see a grown man claim
he hears a voice from the dead telling him that somebody's nickname is
Miss Piggy, or that a dog is angry that another dog is now using his dish,
and millions of Americans ooooh and aaaaah at his spiritual prowess.

October 14, 2001.
According
to the Berlin bureau of Reuters, the
American illusionist David Copperfield claims he predicted on February 17, 2001, what the
winning numbers in the German national lottery would be on October 13,
2001. Copperfield agrees with this part of the Reuters story. However, the
report also claims that Copperfield said, "It wasn't a trick." Copperfield
says what he actually said was "This is not a trick like making the Statue
of Liberty disappear."

One of the oldest tricks in the mentalist's
bag is the sealed envelope reading trick. The Reuters writer, or
his or her editor, apparently spiced up the Copperfield story with a
deliberately misleading quote. The illusionist described his psychic
prediction in exactly the terms one would expect a mentalist to use in
describing his trick. Copperfield claims that his prediction was "sealed
by a notary and locked in a box that was kept under round-the-clock
surveillance." According to Reuters, "One hour after the winning numbers
were drawn, the box was opened on a live television broadcast and the
numbers on the slip of paper matched the winning draw: 2, 9, 10, 15, 25,
38, 4." By claiming Copperfield said it wasn't a trick, the writer made
Copperfield out to be a liar.

If you are wondering how to do this conjuring
trick, James
Randi demonstrated it years ago. You can see for yourself by ordering
a remastered CD for $15 from Hank
Lee.

The story also claimed that when asked why he doesn't use his psychic powers to win
lotteries, Copperfield said, "I find them boring. I'm not a
gambler." This could be an accurate quote, but in the context of the
misquote, it is very misleading. The Reuter's writer also claims that
Copperfield said he can only "see" the numbers when
he keeps them secret, and that whenever he gave out the numbers to
friends, he was wrong. But when he doesn't tell anyone the numbers, he is
right.

I asked magician/writer Bob Steiner about the sealed
envelope trick and he sent me a copy of two news clippings from the Contra
Costa Times. One was dated June 8, 1991 and the other was dated June
21, 1991. On the 8th he had predicted the headlines of the 20th. The story
on the 8th detailed how his predictions were sealed and stored. Bob, a
former national president of the Society of American Magicians, delivered
his list of predictions to the newspaper's office.

The slip of paper was placed
inside a small plastic box, about 2 inches long. That was rolled inside
a plastic baggie and dropped into a paper bag, which was stapled
and initialed by the reporter.

That was rolled up and placed
in a mayonnaise jar, which was put into another baggie.

Steiner then mixed a bucket of
plaster of paris, some of which was deposited into the bottom of an
orange juice carton. The mayonnaise jar was put inside and the rest of
the plaster of paris dumped on top of it.

The reporter initialed the
carton, which was handed over to Mike Farnam, a security representative
for burns International Security Services.

Farnam took the sealed
predictions to a Wells Fargo bank vault....

The story on the 21st (about the unveiling of the
predictions the day before) noted that Bob got two of the headlines right,
but the third prediction was "Giants/25" and there was no such
headline. However on the sport's page there was a photo of a ballplayer
wearing number 25 sliding into a base at a Giant's game.

How did he do it? Bob cannot tell a
lie. In fact, he won't tell anything. But the story on the 21st noted that
before opening the predictions "Steiner called for four volunteers,
including Concord Mayor Byron Campbell. Each volunteer took turns
unsealing the predictions, which were given to Campbell to be read."

Bob is quoted as saying "anyone who studies magic can
do this." Even so, it's still great entertainment.

[This entry was revised on July 5, 2002, after being
alerted by Florin Clapa of a
James Randi retraction. Both Randi and I did not question the Reuter's
article and falsely accused Copperfield of lying about this not being a
trick. Mea culpa. I deserve 666 lashes with the wet noodle.]
[thanks to Glen Green......and Bob Steiner]

October 4, 2001.
Last month, the Journal
of Reproductive Medicine Online(vol 46. no. 9, September 2001)
featured an article called "Does Prayer Influence the Success of in
Vitro Fertilization–Embryo Transfer? Report of a Masked, Randomized
Trial" by Kwang Y. Cha, M.D., Daniel P. Wirth, J.D., M.S., and
Rogerio A. Lobo, M.D. The answer, say the authors, is "yes, quite a
bit." For example, "The IP [intercessory prayer] group had a
higher pregnancy rate as compared to the no-IP rate (50% vs. 26%,
P=.0013)." The story has been in the news lately, in newspapers, on
television, and, on the Internet
where one can find a fair and reasonable account by Dr. Tim Johnson for
ABCnews.com of something that shouldn't be science much less news. We
expect this kind of stuff from the "alternative"
health/energy medicine folks, but not from "real"
scientists.

I don't question that the researchers were able to
establish a "statistically significant difference" between the
IP and no-IP groups. The researchers went to quite a bit of trouble to do
their controlled, double-blind experiment.
They even had the one's doing the praying in a different country from
those getting the in vitro fertilization. One thing they didn't do,
however, was define "prayer" or explain how it might influence
anything in the universe, much less the outcome of their little
experiment. Nor did they address an even more serious issue. If prayer
works by influencing God to influence the outcome of an experiment, then
God can interfere with the laws of nature at any time. If God can
interfere with the laws of nature at any time, then no controlled,
double-blind study can be sure of the meaning of whatever outcome results.
Any result could be the result of direct influence by God. In other words,
the assumption the study is based on is self-defeating. No science at all
would be possible if God could be interfering with the laws of nature at
will. Science requires a backdrop of lawfulness in Nature in order to
discover any causal connection between anything and anything else.

I'm sure other devoted scientists will try to duplicate
this experiment. When they do, I suggest that they try a couple of things.
One, I suggest they do the same experiment, except that nobody prays for
anybody. Pretend that one group had prayers said for them and call that
group the IP group. Compare it to the other group, which we can call the
no-IP group even though both groups are no-IP. Do this five or six times
to see if you can get a statistically significant difference between the
two groups. You shouldn't, of course. But if you do, that would strengthen
the probability that there was some methodological, procedural or
mathematical error in the first study. I would also do a few studies where
one group, instead of being prayed for, would be arbitrarily associated
with a group of people who point their butts towards the East at dawn and
say "yabba dabba doo doo." We can call the group associated with
this irrational activity the YDDD group. Compare them to the no-YDDD
group. There should be no statistically significant difference between the
groups. If we find statistically significant differences when we do not
expect to we can conclude that God interfered with the normal course of
nature. Though we probably should conclude something else; for example, we
might conclude that sometimes statistically significant differences are
not indicative of causal connections but should be expected to occur
occasionally even when there is no causal event. Or we might conclude that
some sort of error has occurred in our methodology or calculations.

On the other hand, we suggest that instead of wasting
everyone's time on this kind of non-sense, even if the non-sense is
dressed up in clean white coats and replete with scientific and
statistical jargon, we do some meaningful research like that reported in a
recent issue of Nature
regarding a gene that has been identified as being responsible for a
specific human language disorder. Something useful might actually come of
such research, but nothing of use will come of studies trying to see if
strangers praying for strangers can help them get pregnant.

What has happened to scientific research when magical
thinking is considered within the bounds of reasonable empirical study?
[thanks to Karl Jennings]

On May 30, 2004, it was reported
that one of the study's authors is “a conman obsessed with the paranormal
who has admitted to a multi-million-dollar scam. Daniel Wirth pleaded
guilty to conspiracy in connection with a $2 million business fraud in
Pennsylvania. [He was sent to federal prison.] Wirth has used a series of
false identities for several decades, including that of a dead child.”
According to The Observer, “Wirth is at the centre of a network of
bizarre scientific research.”

Dr. Bruce Flamm of the University
of California commented that he is “concerned this study could be totally
fraudulent.”

Wirth has a law degree and a
master’s in parapsychology from John F. Kennedy University, but has no
medical qualifications. He has co-authored numerous pieces of research
claiming to prove paranormal activities. He headed something called
Healing Sciences Research International, which appears to have been
nothing but a mailing address.

Dale Beyerstein of the University
of British Columbia has been investigating the work of Wirth and his
frequent partner in crime, Joseph Horvath, for several years. He likens
them to a pair of conmen.

The Observer reports that
shortly after the prayer and fertility study was published, the Department
of Health began an investigation into Columbia University's research. “It
found numerous ethical problems. [Rogerio A.] Lobo, a respected scientist
who was named initially as the lead author of the research, had only
provided 'editorial review and assistance with publication' on the study.”

Nevertheless, “No evidence of
manipulation has yet surfaced, and the study's authors stand behind their
data” (Carey).
Still suspicions remain. Wirth was the one who provided Dr. Kwang Cha, a
Korean fertility specialist, with “a roster of the women he said had been
prayed for” when they met at a Starbucks on the Upper West Side [New York
City].
Allegedly, Wirth had not seen Cha’s pregnancy results yet. Lobo’s name was
added to the study, though he admits he made no contribution to it and
received it as a “fait accompli.” Lobo admits the data could have been
manipulated but he says he doesn’t see how (Carey).

We now know how Dr. Cha
manipulated data on another paper he published. The
Los Angeles Times reports that the data were plagiarized:

Dr. Kwang-Yul Cha, whose company also owns
fertility clinics and a large hospital in Seoul, is listed as the
primary author on a medical paper that appeared in December 2005 in the
U.S. medical journal Fertility and Sterility.

But that paper appears to be nearly a
paragraph-for-paragraph, chart-for-chart copy of a junior researcher's
doctoral thesis, which appeared in a Korean medical journal nearly two
years earlier, according to a Times review of both papers and the
findings of a Korean medical society.

There seems to be no reason left
for trusting anything in this published paper that allegedly found a
significant correlation between prayer and success in a fertility clinic.

It looks quite simple, even
simplistic, to the observer: A patient recalls memories of a traumatic
event -- over and over -- while watching a doctor's fingers move back
and forth, or while listening to repetitive sounds in a headset. That's
it -- a drill that looks a bit like a nightclub hypnotism. Yet after
just a few sessions, this methodology has helped the survivors of hugely
traumatic events, including the Columbine school shootings, the Oklahoma
City bombing, the Bosnian war and floods in Bangladesh.

Helped survivors? How? Helps and its
cognates are the most empty terms in the handbag of doublespeak. The great
success of EMDR is touted throughout the article--including it's imminent
success in helping thousands of survivors of the September 11th
horrors. But no effort was made by Brown to speak to even a single patient
who allegedly has been miraculously cured by EMDR. She seems to have
simply taken the word for it of the one who invented it and another who
profits by it. No mention is made of any of the many criticisms that have
been made of EMDR. Nor does Brown note that the treatment is not
recognized by the American Psychological Association.

Brown does, however, quote Shapiro in an attempt to
explain how EMDR works.

"The 'why' of EMDR is not
known, because there's not enough known in the area of brain physiology
to know what the underpinnings of any form of psychotherapy are,"
says Shapiro. One popular theory is that EMDR forces the same kind of
rapid eye movements (or REM) that occur when you sleep; and the function
of REM is to process emotion. Others believe that the constant sensory
stimulation basically bombards the brain, and activates the frontal
areas that have shut down.

No mention was made of the fact that Shapiro backed off on
the significance of the hand movements being followed by the eyes of
patients when it was discovered that the therapy worked just as well with blind
patients (where tones and hand-snapping were used) as
with sighted ones. Many critics think that EMDR is just a type of
cognitive therapy wrapped in new ornaments and jargon. Shapiro at one time
had admitted that eye movement is not essential to eye movement
desensitization processing.

Brown concludes:

The aftershocks of the World
Trade Center will resonate in the minds and hearts of its survivors for
months or even years; and this, say EMDR researchers, is why EMDR will
play a key role in their recovery -- now and later.

The first part of her statement is undoubtedly true. The
need for counseling and support is going to be great, especially for all
the children
affected. The second part remains to be seen. In the meantime, how about
some balanced journalism?
[thanks to Joe Littrell & Barry Karr]

September 17,
2001. President Bush has declared himself "a good guy"
and vows to "rid the world of evil-doers." (He's done this
before. Last May he gave
$43 million to the Taliban because they were "good guys"
too. They banned opium growing as against the will of God. Maybe Bush
didn't realize that the Taliban considers just about everything to be
against the will of God.) I believe there were
19 people who thought the same thing last week. Let's hope our President
doesn't believe that the murder of thousands of innocent people is
justified in the name of doing God's work or ridding the world of evil. He
has promised us a long war and the end of terrorism. Perhaps he means to
continue the policies of his father, also a good man who wanted to rid the
world of evil. According to UNICEF,
the economic sanctions against Iraq are a major contributing factor to the
deaths of thousands of children every year. George
Galloway, the Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, claims that for the past
eleven years some 60,000 children a year have died in Iraq. To people like Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson, the deaths of these children is God's way
of punishing evil and warning the Iraqis to be good. The World
Council of Churches sees it differently, but what do they know?

I hope before our good President begins in earnest to
ferret out evil around the globe that he takes some time to reflect on why
any group of people would have so much hatred for the United States that
they would blow up our marine's barracks in Beirut, bomb our embassies in
Africa and hijack passenger planes to use as armed missiles against
civilian targets in the United States? What would possess anyone to kill
themselves for such a cause? It seems too simple to say that these are
fanatics who think a jihad justifies suicide-murders and that Allah has
reserved a special place in heaven for such "martyrs." It seems
too simple to think that these terrorists are zombies who do anything Osama
bin Laden tells them to do. As one
professor (As'ad AbuKhalil, associate professor of political science at
California State University at Stanislaus) put it: "No average, pious Muslim, even if he or she is
promised all sorts of delight in heaven, will do something crazy."* For
over two years, the FBI
has had a standing offer of $5 million for information leading to the
arrest of Osam bin Laden, to no avail.

I hope that the rest of us will not give our good leader a
free ticket to do whatever he thinks necessary to rid the world of evil,
i.e., Al
Qaeda and its associates.
Blind patriotism is as dangerous as blind religious
fanaticism. Both can
be little more than excuses to abdicate responsibility. This is not a time
for pounding anyone who disagrees with you or who doesn't wave his flag as
vigorously as you do. This is a time for reflection. This isn't a time for
killing more children, bombing more civilians, or harassing our neighbors
who don't fit our idea of "true Americans." This is not a time
for inflaming
hatred or ignoring the voice of reason. It is a time to mourn and
reflect. This is not the time for shouting. It is time to listen.

The President has declared that we are at war and will
consider anyone who harbors our enemy to be our enemy as well. I assume
that means we are at war with Al Qaeda, other terrorist groups associated
with Al Qaeda, and any nation that gives refuge to
members of those terrorist organizations. The actions of the suicide-mass
murderers last Tuesday have given him no other option. How we carry
out this war will determine not only our own destiny but the destiny of
our planet.

addendum (9/22/01): A reader wanted to know why I waste my
time on "nutcases" like Jerry Falwell. I concern myself with
Falwell and his delusions because they are shared by millions of Jews,
Christians and Muslims around the world. These people believe the stories
in the Bible about Sodom and Gomorrah and Noah's
Ark. They don't just believe that the cities were destroyed in fire
and brimstone or that there was a great flood. They believe these and
other events of mass destruction were the direct work of their Creator to
show His anger at people who would dare to enjoy this life and have a good
time rather than spend all their time worshipping the Almighty. For
thousands of years, people of these religions have used this belief in
Divine Vengeance to justify every imaginable atrocity against those they
deem to be God's enemies. This view's dangerousness is only surpassed by
its inanity. Yet, millions of people have adhered to it and adhere to it
still. They despise liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless it fits
with their ideas of how to worship their God.

They think an Omnipotent, Perfect Being needs to be
worshipped. How much more foolish can one get? As Epicurus pointed out a
couple of thousand years ago: if the gods are perfect, they can't depend
on us for their happiness. If our behavior can upset them, they're not
perfect. If they need us to tell them we love them, they're not perfect.
No perfect being would have to depend on other beings for anything.

These true believers think they have to do God's dirty
work and punish those who don't worship their God the way they think He
should be worshipped. Why would an Omnipotent Being need any of His
creations to do anything for Him, especially since, according to the
belief of most of these worshippers, eternal punishment awaits those who
don't obey God's rules?

It does not take a great deal of thinking or deep analysis
to recognize that the God they believe in, an Omnipotent Creator, could
not logically require either worship or justice. Such a Being would of
necessity be indifferent towards us. We could be no more significant that
any grain of sand from the point of view of an Omnipotent Being. But these
religions have anthropomorphized God and rationalized their deception by
claiming that we are made in God's image instead of the other way around.
So they think that God needs to have His power affirmed the way we do. God
needs to be loved, the way we do. God gets angry, the way we do. God seeks
vengeance, the way we do. God hates evil, the way we do. God is good, like
us. God want us to strike down evil, like he does. Those who aren't like
us are evil, so God wants us to strike them down. The absurdity and
self-deception of these views is apparent when we see that millions of
Jews, Christians and Muslims see themselves as good with God on their side
and the others as enemies, evil and on the side of Satan.

About the only good thing I can find in these religions is
the comfort they give people in times of trouble. People think that even
when disaster strikes, God cares about them and will smite their enemies
in the end. They think that even the most inexplicable and horrible events
must be part of some divine purpose, so they can somehow live with them
and be comforted by the thought that there is a reason for everything. No
matter how bad things seem, they can look forward to eternal bliss, a
continuous never-ending worshipping of the One who made it all possible
and whom they think will know them by their first name.